Saltzburg didn't trash Fly.com specifically, but he made some pointed remarks about what he characterized as TripAdvisor Flights' organic-growth strategy versus those competitors which grow through unsustainable marketing spend.

Hint, hint: I think he was referring to Fly.com.

After all, Travelzoo reported this week that it spent $9.6 million in marketing in the U.S. and Canada in the second quarter, an increase of $2 million from the second quarter of 2008. And, Travelzoo attributed much of the jump to "a $914,000 increase" in Fly.com marketing.

But, first, here's Saltzburg's main beef.

Saltzburg, who heads up the TripAdvisor Flights metasearch effort, argued that the data which I used from Compete Inc. in yesterday's post "grossly under-represents" the number of searchers and visitors using TripAdvisor Flights and wrongly gives the impression that the gap between the TripAdvisor metasearch effort and Fly.com is surprisingly narrow.

The TripAdvisor official added that the Compete portrait of the metasearch market "doesn't accurately represent the trajectory of our business."

Michael Redbord , a travel analyst for number-cruncher Compete, told me yesterday that in an effort to get an apples to apples comparison between TripAdvisor Flights and competitors like Fly.com, Kayak/SideStep and Bing Travel, Compete measured traffic that came directly to domains like TripAdvisor.com/flights and TripAdvisor.com/cheapflights and didn't take into account searchers and visitors that arrived from "third-party lead generators."

Those lead generators, I believe, include Expedia Inc. units in the TripAdvisor Media Network, including SeatGuru, CruiseCritic and SmarterTravel etc.

Hence, that may be part of the reason behind what TripAdvisor perceives as a larger-than-advertised gap between TripAdvisor and Fly.com, both of which launched their metasearch offerings within a few weeks of one another in February.

Although TripAdvisor regularly boasts about its "more than 25 million monthly visitors," Saltzburg, citing competitive reasons, declined to disclose any numbers about TripAdvisor Flights.

However, Saltzburg did say that the number of searches conducted through TripAdvisor Flights in the second quarter was "significantly higher" than the 2.4 million that Fly.com disclosed.

Asked for Fly.com's take on the numbers and TripAdvisor's point that the gap is wider than Compete portrayed, Brian Clark, general manager of search products at Travelzoo, said: "Other data show Fly.com moving up the ranks as well. Hitwise shows Fly.com as the #18 most popular website under Travel – Agencies for June, which was only our 5th month of operation, and only slightly behind Bing."

Clark added: "I'm not sure where Hitwise puts TripAdvisor Flights. We’ve asked them where that site is in their rankings and they said they would 'look at the site.'”

Meanwhile, Saltzburg went on to show why he considers TripAdvisor Flights to be a different beast than its competitors.

"We are on a slow and steady growth trajectory that we feel great about," he said, adding that TripAdvisor measures itself against major OTAs and not against most of the metasearch crowd.

Saltzburg said TripAdvisor's strategy, unlike unidentified others (hint, hint) is to grow TripAdvisor Flights organically, to leverage the TripAdvisor Media Network, and to build the offering in a sustainable manner.

He claimed TripAdvisor Flights has used paid advertising to attract merely "a single-digit percentage" of its external traffic.

"We haven't had to invest negatively in our business," Saltzburg said, referring to companies who allegedly tear down profits to garner traffic.

Putting the TripAdvisor Flights-Fly.com faceoff into context, Travelzoo spokeswoman Mindy Joyce noted that "Expedia Inc. is a much larger company than Travelzoo Inc. -– over 35x larger ($2.9B to $80M annual revenues). They have many more resources which will help them drive traffic to TripAdvisor.

"With that said," Joyce continued, "we do have over 10 million active U.S, subscribers who receive deals from Travelzoo that drive traffic to Fly.com directly, and with recent fare calendar enhancements using Fly.com technology, Travelzoo e-mail subscribers have new tools that help finding airfares easier than with any other site. We are using the tools that we have very effectively."

Joyce pointed to Fly.com's 85 percent growth in traffic from May to June as evidence of Travelzoo's leveraging of its subscriber base.

"It does make us a highly relevant player in the space, only 5 months after we launched," Joyce added.

So, is Fly.com's growth strategy, replete with its marketing spend, a sustainable endeavor?

I went for an answer to someone renowned in the travel industry for having a point of view.

And, Steve Hafner, the CEO of Kayak, inferred that the jury is out on Fly.com's marketing strategy.

"I really wouldn't know if it's sustainable or not," Hafner said. "We spend a lot more and it's been sustainable."

Meanwhile, like TripAdvisor, Kayak has its eyes on other issues and competitors.

Said Hafner, "Overall, I'm not terribly interested in Fly.com, TripAdvisor or Bing. I'm much more interested in navigating a potential Google entry."

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I've followed online travel, its twists, turns and detours, since the beginning (not Adam and Eve, but Rich and Terry), and will follow the aforesaid in this blog. I'm North America editor of Tnooz and I write USA Today's Digital Traveler column. Things not in my resume: I visited Orbitz headquarters pre-launch in 2000 and, left unattended, eavesdropped and examined the whiteboards to learn partnership details; Travelocity's ex-CEO Michelle Peluso credits me with her success (Wharton notwithstanding) after I wrote a sentence (with accompanying photo) mentioning that some of her Site59 women wore fishnet stockings and then airline execs kept the phone lines busy; I once drove to tiny Sherman, Conn., to see where PhoCusWright lives; and I was a nachtportier in a West Berlin hotel in the days (Btw) when a nasty wall split the city. Fyi, the previous stuff wasn't necessarily in chronological order.

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The opinions I express in the Dennis Schaal Blog are my own. Only I could think of this stuff. The opinions uttered or written here in no way reflect on the views of past employers, current partners, future associations (how could they anyway?) or my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Slayton. I don't have a lawyer, but if I had one, he or she probably would have told me to write something like this. Well, maybe not exactly. The Dennis Schaal Blog is Copyright (c) 2009 by Dennis Schaal. All rights reserved.